Amazing Adventures of Nana Croft and Q Gamma
by Zorm
Summary: Hyper-crossovered, parody-oriented scifi adventure written in the style of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. A better summary in the author notes.
1. Author notes

**Author Notes**: This is a parody-oriented scifi series written in the style of Douglas Adams's _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_. It makes fun of almost any possible scifi/fantasy thing the authors have seen/read/experienced while having a dinner with the little green men.

Basically the story is about the adventures of two university student girls who involuntarily witness a mysterious crime done by the agent of an evil space emperor. This shocking experience reveals that there is life also outside the Earth, and that the 'normal people' are strictly kept unaware of that by several alien organizations. And before their memories are wiped clean with re-organizing brainwashing, the girls manage to flee the Earth, and end up roaming around the galaxy and fight evil with a team they gather alongside the adventures.

This used to be in FictionPress.Net, but due to the circumstances of it being actually a fanfiction crossover, it was removed from there and transferred here.

100% guarantee: NO Mary Sues! NO Marty Stus! No annoyingly perfect damsels in distress! Rated PG-13 for violence and some vitriol jokes.

Don't take this too seriously. And don't panic. This story usually makes no sense whatsoever. And as none of the authors speak English as their primary language, there will be grammar errors more or less frequently.

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Nana Croft, Q Gamma, Evil Emperor Åke, Zirius Darkstar, Ralo, and other original characters © Zorm, NGene, and Rausku-Pulu (our occasional idea assistant) 2003. Star Wars © Lucasfilm. Men in Black © WB. Harry Potter characters © JK Rowling. LOTR © JRR Tolkien. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy © Douglas Adams. Tuxedo T. Penguin is owned by the Linux communities worldwide (hail the penguins!). Other spoofed & borrowed characters or such not mentioned here, belong to their respective companies, respectfully. No profit is made of this junk fic.

On to the story. If you don't already snore. **----------------------**

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	2. Prologue's prologue

**Amazing Adventures of Nana Croft and Q Gamma**

1. PROLOGUE'S PROLOGUE

It was just a normal early October morning in a small town somewhere in the Great Green North. A place where trees still grew free in the untouched forests and eagles soared in the sky looking for hunt. Although in this land the usage of cellular phones was so massive that due to the influence of irritation, the most sensitive eagles and trees had voluntarily fled to the neighborhood state, so that they would not need to listen to the nauseous ringtones and stupid people blabbering about stupid pointless things round the clock to their handies. It was a sad thing to perceive that every time when a middle-aged fat lady called to her middle-aged fat female friend with a mobile phone and consumed five minutes by telling how she had bought cheap margarine from the nearby superstore with the price of less than one Euro, either a tree or an eagle caught a panic attack and escaped beyond the border. Some of them went even further; they put a branch or a wing up to form the intergalactic hitchhike sign. Human beings usually used their thumb for this, but due to various creational reasons, eagles and trees did not possess such things. This sign however usually was noticed by a past-flying UFO. The aliens frequently gave lifts to such creatures as eagles and trees and penguins; however the green little men from various outside solar systems did not want to be in touch with the low-browed slobbering human beings. Most people on Earth had none kind of idea that extraterrestrial life even existed; there was only a handful of selected individuals around the globe who _were_ aware. And of course the international organization of Men in Black, the black-uniformed agents who took care that the alien world did not interfere with the normal average jacks or fat middle-aged ladies in too-small jog suits carrying cheap margarine packages in their plastic bags.

But, let us peek at our main day again. It was just a normal early October morning in a small town somewhere in the Southern Finland. It seemed so normal, that even the word 'normal' was too normal to describe it. Children dragged their schoolbags on the streets and en passant gave a new look for random walls by spraying a quick graffiti on them. Their caring, lovable parents sat in traffic jams and friendlily flipped their middle fingers or shook their fists to the car drivers in front. In the bushes the earthy folk groaned holding their heads; perhaps the last pint yesterday had been too much. And the fat middle-aged ladies in their too-small jog suits were queuing outside the supermarket; with good luck they could grab their own package of that cheap margarine before the lady next door.

So… everything seemed so normal. _Seemed_. But beware of what the eye cannot behold…

In a tiny student's bedsit -tinier than the tiniest-, near the city's campus, Q Gamma groaned in her sleep. 

Yes, her name was Q Gamma. What a ridiculously stupid cliché. But it was not her fault. Her parents, a bunch of cuckoo mathematicians, had thought it very witty to name their only daughter after a famous mathematical function. The Q-analog of the Gamma Function was this couple's absolutely favorite function, they loved it so deeply that they devoted even the most romantic night hours to discuss about its brilliantly glorious existence. Thus it seemed also logical that their only dear daughter would carry a part of this marvelous mathematical phenomenon the rest of her life.

Nonetheless, these early awakenings before 11 am were not Q's best event. Once again, the previous night had been consumed with pathetic nerd business: surfing on the Internet until the dawn had brightened, looking for the Question of Life, Universe, and Everything. The Answer to the Question of Life, Universe, and Everything, which she had known for a good amount of years already, was of course 42. This sole digit enveloped the grand harmony of this cosmos into itself. Only if someone had known the _question_ to it… Q of course had a good theorem that the question was 'What is The Matrix?', but the search still continued… even last night.

Q's 18-square-meter-sized bacheloress flat was in its perfect state as usual. The dishes were unwashed from beyond three weeks, there was an old sock hanging over the computer screen, and the room's air was so dank that someone coming from the freshness of outdoor would have died to suffocation. Nevertheless, her huge DVD collection was arranged to alphabetical order, her 1200 CD's were without a scratch, and her antiperspirant bottle was neatly set on the nightstand (which was actually the CPU box of her computer but tremendously handy as a nightstand) right beside a half-eaten sandwich which had obviously resided there already a few days since the cheese on it had grown fur.

"Groaaarmmm… Rrrauurrhhh…" she yawned deep, stretching under the bedsheets. That sensually feminine roar was one of the funky effects her very deep and hoarse voice could provide. Besides that she was skilled to imitate Darth Vader and laugh like The Green Goblin from the infamous Spiderman movie.

Her bare feet touched the floor beside the bed. The sheets were tossed aside. Out crawled a girl around twenty-two, slim, pale, with the great height of five feet four inches. Q seemingly had forgotten to tie her hair before going to sleep; now the mass of copper red locks was in a big tangled heap above her head. Normally the girl's tidy braid would hang in the back and reach the line of her poples. She had no clue at what point her hair had grown that long. Perhaps it had something to do with the skipped hairdresser visits. Why bother to go to cut your hair when with that money could be done something far much more intriguing? Like to buy a new pinnacle chip, or a new Star Wars action figure to stand on the desk…

_Crack._ Something went broken under her sole. Q had just taken the first step to reach the reality.

"Darn", she snorted and picked up her glasses from the floor. Their frames resembled now rather much those artistic creations some bored-up personalities constructed from paper clips during boring lessons. This was not the first time, however, that they went broken by being stepped over. Q was absent-minded. She often placed her glasses on the floor before going to sleep. And last night… the search of the Question to the Ultimate Answer of Life, Universe, and Everything had been so exhausting, that at the moment she feebly fell in the arms of the bed around 5 am, she could have half-sleeping flushed the glasses down the toilet. Which would have been a disaster, since those glasses were her most important possession. As having -9 dioptres of myopia plus astigmatism plus suppressed strabismus, she hardly saw anything that was beyond her nosetip.

As distressing and terrible and atrocious and orcish as the situation seemed with the broken goggles, it was not all that distressing and terrible and atrocious and orcish after all. Right on the desk, beside an Obi-Van Kenobi action figure, which was beside a bread crumb, which was beside a used AA battery, which was beside a coffee-daubed handout, which was beside a broken piggybank, which was beside an empty CD-R, which was beside a lego house, which was beside a Jar Jar Binks action figure, which was beside the Obi-Van Kenobi action figure, was an electronic quick-repairer for broken glasses. Unfortunately the conception of adjacency is very undefined on this desk, so we cannot actually conclude beside which item the machine of question actually was. Skilled professors could have built up fine theorems about this desk; it could be said that the whole famous chaos theorem was in action on this desk. But hardly any professor could have succeeded to study this desk. Since: right before the miraculous discovery of such scientifically remarkable desk, he or she would have choked dead due to the amazingly dank air of this very room.

Q slouched the short path to the desk, navigating with the aid of blurry shapes and her arms. After crashing down two pyramids of schoolbooks, and getting her toe smashed against a leg of a chair, she made it. The dangerous journey to the scientific desk. She tossed her glasses inside the repairer, and pushed a large red button. In a second, the glasses had received their old nice shape again. They were ready to be set on the top of Q's nose. As well as the curtains of the room's only window were ready to be drawn aside.

Ah, how the world got brighter! Only that there was the trouble that Q liked darkness. Sunlight irritated her, that's why the curtains were always drawn tight shut. However, now the gentle yellow sunlight touched her milk-white cheeks and goldened the shaggy mass of her still uncombed hair. Angrily she was about to toss the shields back to hide that jester gas ball, but a horrible view made her froze on her spot.

_The pigeons had come back._

Indeed. There, behind the window, on the branches of those leafless alders, were sitting those pigeons again. Fat, ridiculously cute pigeons whose mere presence generally made no sense. The tree branches wobbled under their weight. _When had they come back?_ It had been weeks since they had left, and Q had lulled herself to the hope of never seeing them again. But now… that they _had_ come back?

But, what so scary or ominous was there just in a bunch of pigeons? They were not the most ominous and scary creatures on Earth, were they?

Actually, the pigeons have a lot darker history than any of those grannies in parks stuffing them with bread crumbs could ever have expected… 


	3. Pigeons explained

2. PIGEONS EXPLAINED: WHAT THEY ARE AND WHAT IS THEIR PURPOSE CONCERNING THE DARK MATTERS REIGNING THE SMALL EVIL ISLANDS OF THE UNIVERSE

So, what's the big deal with pigeons? Huh? Has the narrator gone insane?         

Generally, people believed the pigeons to be calm by-residents that had habited the small rock called Tellus long before the dawn of mankind. Thousands of years before Adam, they had cooed as irritatingly as today. They had been pigeons when they had been created, and they had been pigeons until this day. _Columba livia _had looked like a pigeon in the cave paintings of stone-aged men. _Columba livia _had looked like a pigeon in the medieval manuscripts. _Columba livia _looked like a pigeon in the modern bird books. _Columba livia _looked like a normal pigeon in the Internet pictures. Damn it, what's so freaking strange in a single stupid pigeon, then? You only ask, you only ask. And _they_ ask. 

Actually, in the most shadowy shades of time, some pigeons had turned to the dark side of the force. This is the official history of the Dark Pigeons according to the _Intergalactic Birdwatcher Database_ (founded on the same historical galactic year as an automatic sock-stink stimulator was invented in a small research centre on a small planet in the vicinity of Wezen III. But since that invention did not really become an interstellar success and unfortunately had sucked a large amount of money during its development, it merely caused the bankruptcy of the minor company that sponsored the small research centre. So nothing important there and let us get back to the horrible and appalling secrets of the pigeons.) is the following:

_Pigeon (commonly known as _Ruma ja läski lintu joka lehahti lähimmän puhelinpylvään nokasta ilmaan ja kakki hatullesi _in the official intergalactic language), is a carbonic based life form that is covered with feathers and has a digestion system more complex than that of a Slimoblobbian Blast-Ended Skrewt. Its origins are on a remote planet Tellus (third planet from the local sun in the solar system of H-I-Llbilly-C-093423042). Sometime during the Orcmorbotgrrrhothian wars around years 3670011K-3671000C, a Blorrffgrrothian military commander smuggled these creatures from Tellus, brainwashed them to join the dark side, and successfully began using them as spies. Pigeons make cunning and skillful secret agents due to their innocent looks and 'presumably' low intelligence level._

_After the Blorrffgrrothians has successfully won the Orcmorbotgrrrhothian wars and turned their opponents into oozing protoplasm, the usage of pigeons as spies gradually spread among the war lords that fought against the current Galactic Coalition. Some empires of the dark side went on to genetically manipulate the pigeons to make them more efficient to collect secret governmental information and in the same time still retain their innocent dotty looks. For long, these creatures were kept only as a migrant species in the solar systems of the Galactic Coalition, until around year 42345155ZZ it was scandalously discovered that the coalition's largest enemy, the Evil Empire of Masked Mallards, had tens of years spied confidential intergalactic secrets via their genetically manipulated pigeons._

_The same year the possession and usage of pigeons was made illegal by strict laws inside the borders of the Galactic Coalition. A footnote, however, allowed the original species still to remain on the remote planet Tellus, where they natively habited. The local pigeon population on this particular planet is regularly checked by the Intergalactic Bureau of Regulation of Illegal Creatures and assured that they are not a security threat._

_Opposition leaders in the Galactic Coalition Senate have often protested that pigeons should be banned even on Tellus._

Oh, if only the situation had been this calm. What the Galactic Coalition did not know, was that there was a terrible new Dark Lord arisen from the ashes of a shady fallen kingdom, somewhere in the most remote rims of the Milky Way. And that he had re-awaken the pigeons… by making them even more vicious and slitheringly sneaky… so that even the Galactic Coalition was unable to detect the looming atrocious shadows of the scowling murky horizon.

And in the little town in Finland, in the little student apartment, Q Gamma had received an asthmatic reaction because of the sheer fright towards the pigeons. There were tens of them in the trees, and they just sat there, and _stared_. With big, bulging eyes they stared right through Q's window. Stared at _her_. Stared at her every movement. Stared so horribly that even the narrator begins to get headache from their stare. 

Panting with fear, she quickly drew the curtains back over that vile scene. What did they want from her? Why had they come back? Why the heck had they come here even originally?

What was there so special in a lazy third-year engineer student that such monstrosities had come to reside in the trees beneath her window?


	4. The pastprologue of prologue's prologue

3. EVEN MORE PROLOGUE! IT'S THE PAST-PROLOGUE OF PROLOGUE'S PROLOGUE!

Still recall the small town somewhere in the land of elk, moose, and other exotic animals that wandered so freely and naturally in the local zoo? At the moment, the city's university was the stage of thrilling happenings –well, at least one classroom in the chemistry faculty's premises. This auditorium was at the moment habited by a variety of biochemistry students. A batty old professor roamed hither and thither in front of the blackboard. He murmured something inexplicable with a voice resembling mosquito whirr, and while he wrote the lecture notes up on the blackboard, his wide sleeve brushed over the freshly drawn equations so that they turned to alien gibberish.

It was very lucky that no aliens were present in the classroom. Namely, what currently was on the blackboard, involuntarily and completely randomly done by the professor's cotton-based garment's protruding piece called sleeve, meant such appalling insults in one dying Uolevian dialect that they would have caused a life-long sentence in the T-Rex-guarded penal colony of Deneb 5.

Nonetheless, the major interest on this lesson was aimed at a minuscule girl in the middle row. She was seemingly asleep and teetered dangerously on the edge of her seat. The enthusiastic male students a few rows behind her were gambling at her cost; they had put their month's earnings in the game to guess when and on what particular second the girl would eventually fall from her seat to the floor. She had managed to balance on the very tip of the seat already so long that it was generally against all the odds in the universe. This miracle indeed was caused by a small cluster of improbability matter that had materialized from another dimension just over her and was controlling the situation with all the possible improbability in the universe.

This particular girl was a Swedish blonde called Nana Croft. Her massive height was slightly less than five feet, and she wore a shabby white (it used to be white, but now its original color was a part of the waging males' guessing game) laboratory coat and a set of huge, perfectly circular bottle-bottom glasses. The pockets of this coat were stuffed with the most peculiar chemical substances, including a haphazardly sealed bottle of 99-molar sulfuric acid. Her hair, as said before, was the color of hydrogen peroxide and about waist-length, somewhat unkempt and was constantly drooping over her pale-blue eyes (which under the circumstances were of course closed now).   

Hereby we must ask, is such a thing as 99-molar sulfuric acid even possible to exist? It is namely so strong, that after it is exposed to the NTP-conditions or slightly above (temperature 273-323 Kelvins and pressure around one bar), it would corrode itself and evaporate, after first corroding everything else around it, in a certain amount of time.

Yet, inside the bottle that resided in Nana Croft's pocket, reigned special conditions so that the liquid did not harm itself or the environment. However, if the bottle's cork would unwittingly open, the results could be apocalyptic.

Enthusiastic whispers flew here and there in the air behind Nana. She had reached such a pose that it was perhaps a mere nanosecond time to the final collapse. But the improbability cloud over her had not yet dematerialized, so it yet kept her position rather stationary.

Other that that, the circumstances were rather normal in the auditorium. Nana always slept during lessons, because in truth there was no need even to listen to them. This biochemistry student had the IQ of Albert Einstein. But that was rather much the only merit; she was so lazy and nerdy that she sometimes beat even Q Gamma with her flaws. No wonder these two oddbirds were also the best friends.

Let us take a goggle again at the classroom. The professor went on with the monotonic hum, and his long floor-dragging beard collected into itself dead flies and other mess generated by dirty shoebottoms. Two benches distance from Nana, a snobby bushy-haired girl with big front teeth was furiously making notes, phenomenally decoding the teacher's droning. In the seat right beside Nana was a cute little basket owned by this particular swotter. It was lined with flowery frilly canvas, and a big, pink bow decorated winsomely the carrier. Inside the basket was a little puppy. It was almost ludicrously adorable, with big brown begging eyes that were slightly oversized compared with its head, a fluffy wagging tail, and a slobbering little pink tongue that was lolling out of its mouth. Every once in a while, it whimpered and gave little barks, wagging its tail around and around, and making tiny leaps around the basket. Its owner occasionally patted its head and gave a hush to quiet it gently down.

"Tut tut, Fluffy! We must listen to the kind professor who tells us important things!" the girl piped and began with the fuming writing again.

Just at the moment the improbability cloud vanished with a mute sound. But it shocked the puppy so much, that it gave a tad louder mewl than before.

This was the beginning of a catastrophe. For the convenience of the audience, we shall tell it here slowly and detailed, and illustrate it with an elaborate slow motion movie that has no pictures or sound. Just the subtitles.

**The Official warning of the Intergalactic Department of Illusionary Experiments_: the understanding of the following scene needs the ability to master a Tellurian language called English with an adequate degree. Unfortunately translations to Betelgeusean or any other common languages of the Galactic Coalition are not currently available. If you are unsatisfied by this current situation, please contact the Complaint Division of the Intergalactic Department of Illusionary Experiments via  the sigma-channel of the interstellar VOG, code number 6.0221367*10^23. Thank you for your patience. _**

With a slump, Nana fell down. A shriek came from the back row. A male with a stubble and moth-eaten fleece jacket had just won someone's 12-months student aid. The professor below at the blackboard was posing a question.

"Who can tell me the atomic number of molybdenum?"

Nana was experiencing the most wonderful sensation in her sleep. She was falling, softly, like a feather, towards a sea that glistened in the sunlight like a meadow of jewels. The few cottony clouds drifting across the sky had a brilliant shade of purple. In the zenith, just under the billows, was delineated the Answer. The Answer to Life, Universe and Everything. It was written onto the marble-white sky with silvery letters.

Forty-Two…

She wanted to scream it out loud with the most jingling laugh she owned. She closed her eyes, and let a squeal of ultimate happiness echo out of her mouth…

_"FORTY-TWO!"_

This was her dream. Under the blaring sky that was covered in the deepest shade of blue…

Nevertheless, this is what happened in reality (of course we could discuss hours about the _definition of reality_, but let us just go on, shall we?).

Just before Nana hit the floor, her brains processed the question the professor had posed. As she knew the answer, her synapses had tangled up with the dream and illustrated it there. Still half-asleep, she bounced up crashing through her desk with a huge _crack_.Her both arms were violently waving in the air, her mouth curved into a jubilant smile.

"FORTY-TWO!"

"That is correct, Miss Croft", the dotty old professor croaked. "The atomic number of molybdenum is forty-two."

What Nana did not notice, was that her bottle of 99-molar sulfuric acid had slipped out of her pocket, and was flying in a perfect quarter-circular curve towards the seat where the puppy was… it hit the seat's handrail and the cork fell open…

Every student jerked to hear the loud _hiss_ and shocked awake to smell the terrible ooze of something burning. The seat next to Nana was abruptly gone and instead of it was a craggy hole on the floor. The parquet around it was black with burning corrosion. Chaotic alarms rang around the classroom, there was deadly dangerous acid on the loose! The panicked students rushed towards the entrances, colliding with one another and getting bruises although no acid had even swept past them.

_"Out!__ Out! Everyone out! It's an emergency!"_

Meanwhile, the 99-molar sulfuric acid continued its way towards the lower floors of the university. Since this was the 5th floor, the merry acid had so many chances to play around a bit. It jovially melted a few computers, someone's sandwich that this someone was just about to bite (the someone was left unharmed, only the poor sandwich experienced its end slightly before it would have been bitten to gooey mush by the certain someone), the only women's toilet in the 2nd floor that had twenty people queuing outside it merely dancing and cringing with uneasiness, someone's 98% done Ph.D. thesis, and then it dug itself about two miles under the ground before it corroded itself and left no evidence of its sole existence.

Baffled Nana surveyed around the deserted classroom. She was still pinned inside the broken desk. With efforts, she loosened herself from her prison, still not understanding what had happened. Had the lesson ended earlier than usually? It was all dizzy in the head. The girl recalled only the marvelous shade of blue and the silvery outline of her cherished number.

And why was her sulfuric acid bottle lying on the floor beside that big steaming hole?

Shrugging, she picked up the bottle and corked it casually, pushing it back inside her pocket. Instantly, the liquid inside it doubled and the dish was almost full of it again. She did not quite know the reason for this, it just kept happening every time the Swedish blonde used the acid somewhere.

Yet, now Nana had no memento whatsoever of what bizarre had happened. Her mind mused that perhaps a by-passing meteor was responsible for that hole in the floor. But the explanation was quite partial since there was no hole in the ceiling…

"Hmm. So maybe I fell asleep and the sulfuric acid fell out of my pocket…" she yawned absent-mindedly. "Gotta get a better stopper for this stinkin' thing…"

Like a sleepwalker in pea-soup-thick fog, she wandered out of the auditorium. Weird, it was so empty out here. Only a bushy-haired girl wept in the corner, being consoled by a few of her friends.

_"And… sniff… I was… going to take… Fluffy… to a dog show today… sniff…"_

Croft hardly heard this. Her eyes were lazily lingering in a vision of a big steamy cup of coffee. Ahh, the soft aroma of freshly brewed mocha… she was slurping the mere air bewitched by this dream. What would taste better than a gigantic bowl of aromatic coffee?

Thus she began searching for a coffee automat. As usually, she had no idea where the next lesson was and when. Perhaps her hyperintelligent IQ would lead her there after an academic pause.

"Q would like coffee too…" she talked to herself. "Wonder if she's woken up yet?"

However…

Nobody was aware that a pack of pigeons had just landed on the top of the university's roof. And that they were completely ruining it with their droppings. And some shady, tall figure slinked inside to the very secret study department of the university, situated fifty floors under the ground.

**…to be continued…**


	5. The real prologue begins

4. TIRED OF PROLOGUE'S PROLOGUE? GOOD, SINCE NOW WE SHALL AND OUGHT TO TURN TO THE _REAL_ PROLOGUE ALREADY. THUS, LET US PROUDLY PRESENT: THE _ONLY AND ONE **REAL**_ PROLOGUE

The sun shone vaguely through a silver mist. The sky had been more than just blue still half an hour ago, but the cruel winds reigning on this planet had just brought there a radioactive smog cloud all the way from Moscow. Nobody yet saw its fatal effects as it hovered there glistening so brilliantly as the sun's rays filtered through it with a halo that had almost religious ecstasy in it. The billow would have no effect whatsoever to anything that was beneath or above or on its side –or in the possible fifth dimension that three-dimensionally crossed it. But alas, if you enter that frolicking and glimmering mist of platinum-like vapor! It will instantly peel you like a banana and then squish the rest into spongy radioactive snot. Then, with all the regular odds (Unless a random cloud of improbability matter will, with an improbability factor of 30532511424242*e^50789, turn you into Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's left foot sock (initials included in embroidery) before it.), you will be accelerated by the planet's gravitation and start your rectilinear drop towards the ground below. Then you will splat onto the pavement and become the instant wonder-target of the day: you will be addressed with quotes like "Did you see, it came down from the sky!", and "What the heck is that?", or "It's a message from the heavens!", or something alike. You would not be distinguished by your former form any longer, since you would have indeed become something amoeba-like and distinctly brown, classically of course having the ability to glow in the dark due to your new radioactive outer shell.

Actually, a couple of such amoeba-like lobs already decorated a grim backstreet which had all the needed features for it to become a grim backstreet: a brick wall with graffitis on it, a leaking pipe beside it, and an amount of rusty trashcans embedded in the slight darkness. However, as these lobs are observed more closely, we can conclude that they are rather more made by the local stray dogs than this newly appeared sparklingly dazzling silver mist. Actually, there was nothing any more in the sky. Meanwhile the narrator explained all this scientific and highly useful information, the cloud took a hike, fluttered over the Gulf of Bothnia, and was shimmering initially over Stockholm.

Q Gamma had reached an important achievement today. She had actually been _able_ to heave herself up from the bed and drag her lazy legs to the roots of the long outdoors staircase that leaded up to the hill where the local university was built.

She took a gait. A step made of rough stone appeared under her sneaker. A hideous memory instantly appeared in her suddenly darkened mind. There were three hundred similar steps to ascend before she would reach the yard up there. And then a few hundred more to get to the classroom where her lecture about Advanced AI Methods was supposed to be.

She took a second step.

And a third one.

A fourth one.

A fifth one.

A sixth one.

A seventh one.

Eight.

Nine.

Ten.

Eleven.

As fantastic as it would be to continue this count, we must ask you to remember that a few sentences ago it was said that the steps were around three hundred. If you are not satisfied by this unabsolute mathematical measure, please visit the town yourself, find the university, and go up the steps yourself. Consider it as an on-the-scene adventure and be thrilled by the excitement of finding out how many steps there actually are.

So, the girl known as Q had eventually approached the top. A wide campus yard spread in front of her sharply shaped nose.

At least if this was an anime movie, it would be sharply shaped.

And we are talking about her nose, not the yard.

But since nobody is speaking Japanese, and her nose seems to be bit more unsharply shaped, this is probably not an anime movie.

The yard made of gray stone slabs looked ominously quiet and empty. This was of course because all the duteous and assiduous students were inside the buildings, their pens diligently writing lecture notes. Inside the buildings which were craning tall and majestic towards the sky where the Russian Smog Cloud had an instant before been.

A battered AM/FM radio stood on the table of an assistant that had already half an hour stood petrified gazing at his 98% percent done Ph.D. Thesis, which had a smoldering black hole just right in the middle of it. The man resembled someone who had just eaten a great lump of solid bedrock and had swallowed it, noticing afterwards that he could not move any longer since the rock was too heavy for him to lift it. But the radio was still in condition and rattled something about a horrid cloud that was making a near massacre in Stockholm.

Q's mind wandered and soared in the odd happenings of this very morning. First the pigeons, and then…

Something had happened to her fridge.

Something ghastly peculiar that would win all the dark galactic secrets lurking in the shadows and put them grow pale and obtuse in front of it. However, Miss Gamma could not understand the meaning behind and unanteriorly this odd phenomenon. She was merely left to wonder.

The fridge had been completely empty.

And she recalled that all the half-rotten food she had forgotten there, had been there still yesterday. The roasted chicken leg she had not remembered to eat a month ago. The broccoli that had lulled there three weeks. The margarine that had achieved an extraordinary shade of green. It was truly enthralling that someone was able to make normal margarine mildew. But obviously Q's fridge was controlled by some ambiguous physical law that the scientists had not yet discovered. Something equal that was controlling her highly unlikely desk.

Yet… all those had been gone as she this morning had scampered up to see if there was anything _eatable_ left. It was a futile measure since there had not been anything eatable left even yesterday. Actually, the last eatable foodstuffs that needed cold space, had been enjoyed last week. Because the girl was badly out of money, she had been satisfied to consume crackers and ryvita the last seven days. And since coffee was not an arctic resident, there had been no real need for a fridge anyway.

Fact of the day: students are almost all the time out of money. They are often very unrich. 

Yet, with an instinct-like habit, she had still peeked inside the fridge this morning. And grown silent. Everything had been gone –even the glass bowl where the chicken leg had slumbered its half-eternal dream.

But… something similar had occurred five weeks ago.

_And then__ the pigeons had been there too…_

Her hackles rose up. She recalled the odd green goo that had splattered her minuscule foyer. Five weeks ago the fridge had also emptied itself from all the putrid food. And that after this first peculiar night, there had been also traces of that ectoplasmic slime in her lobby. That time she had happily though that the fridge probably was a self-cleaning device, and neglected the essence of the goo and its relation to the extraordinary amount of pigeons that had blurbled and glubbered ----

***********************

Hereby we must make a note that the author has obviously enjoyed too much caffeine and is creating words that do not exist in a Tellurean language called English (a subclass of Latin and a few Celtic languages that later were developed into it, also forming such oral means to communicate as German, Swedish, Norwegian, and so on. Chinese is not included in this category since it has basically nothing to do with Latin and nothing to do with this story either).

However, as a few Altairian linguists ponder the vast dilemma of these expressions, they admit that those words describe rather well the phonetic sounds of pigeons. Hence a semi-official pardon is granted to the author and this short but unfutile break in the story flow ends.

Now.

**********************

_---_ in the wobbling trees behind her window. They had left right after that night.

And now the pigeons were there again. The fridge had emptied itself. There were lumps of green goo in Q's foyer. _There was a connection._

_Had something emerged from the fridge and wandered out of the door…?_

This sole, menacing phantom rose in her mind as she let her regard swivel across the empty university yard.

There had been a green tacky mark even in the door's inner handle…

Q felt her mouth growing dry, and a hazily unserene emotion filled her chest.  

**To be continued…**

Even if nobody ever in this space-time-frame reads it. Muwahahahaha.


End file.
